let's go all the way tonight ♪ ♪ no regrets just love ♪ we can dance until we die ♪ you and i ♪ we'll be young forever >> that's it, unfortunately we've got to leave it right there. katy perry performing for the families of the united states military. ever. nurses are dealing with a wider range of issues.

and there are ever-changing regulations. when you see these challenges, do you want to back away or take charge? with a degree in the field of healthcare or nursing from capella university, you'll have the knowledge to advance your career while making a difference in the lives of patients. let's get started at capella.edu. barack obama is entering his second term. only the third democratic president to be re-elected in the last 75 years. he faces deep domestic challenges. above all, a still weak economy. he faces a world in flux and in crisis from iran and syria to north korea and china. perhaps most visibly he faces a domestic political deadlock that seems to overshadow all else.

with this hand, what can he do? what will he do? i've asked for advice from the statesmen and women who have stood beside presidents as they have made their most difficult decisions from republicans like james baker. >> if we didn't have the dollar as the de facto currency of the world, we'd be like greece. >> in a democracy you can only work together if both sides are willing to come together. >> and independents like michael bloomberg. >> when you have jobs that need to be done but americans won't take, letting crops rot or moving crops to south of the border, that's just insanity. >> in the end i write my own memo to the president. let's get started. while most of the world was ringing in the new year with

revelry, the united states congress rang it in with anger, strife, and confusion. the ugly battle over the fiscal cliff was emblematic of one of the biggest crises facing this nation. politics in washington is so decided, so bitter that even kicking the can down the road is almost impossible to get agreement on. so what to do. ronald reagan faced an opposition majority in the house of representatives, and he still got major legislation passed, including a major tax reform bill. james baker was treasury secretary at the time. >> think only time it's ever been done, maybe in at least a hundred years, and we did it with democratic votes. that was with ronald reagan as president. we did it with democratic votes. he was the chairman of ways and means.

he was not going to come with a bill that was very pro-democrat. the question was whether we would sign onto the bill, pass it in the house and then try to fix it in the republican senate. our republican house members came to us and said if you try and do that, we're going to roll you. dick cheney, trent lott, they came down to my office at the treasury department and said if you go follow it with this rostenkowski bill and fix it in the senate, we're going to roll you. and they rolled us on the rule. they defeated us in the rule. and i went over to the white house having been the president's chief of staff for four years i said, mr. president, you've got to come out forcefully in favor of passing the bill so we can get it to the senate and fix it and that means rolling over our house republicans. well, guess what? after a little while he did it, we did it, and that's how we got there. it was successful and it initiated a period of extraordinary economic growth. >> but you're describing a situation where you had to do a

lot of compromising, you stood up to house republicans, supported a democratic bill. it's difficult to imagine in today's partisan climate. >> i think president obama could do it. president obama wants a legacy. he deserves one. he's not going to have a legacy if he can't fix our economy. >> kay bailey hutchison is the recently retired senior senator from texas. >> this is his time to step out from his base and away from the fringes on both ends and say here is what our country needs right now. >> ken duberstein, chief of staff in ronald reagan's second term thinks that term stepping out from your base is even more important with obama's re-election. >> the second term is the order of governing, not the order of campaigning. they're very different skill sets.

in the order of governing, you have very much to almost make love to your opponents and say no to your -- some of your fiercest supporters. in campaigning, it's the exact opposite. see, you have to figure out ways that you can accomplish things, realizing that time is an enemy. get as much done as you can, but don't overreach. >> what you're suggesting is that president obama needs to make love to the republicans and betray the democrats who helped elect him. >> i wouldn't use the word "betray" as much as i would say sometimes it takes the ability to say yes to your opponents and no to some of your fiercest supporters. >> a lot of people say president obama should be schmoozing a

lot, he should be playing golf with john boehner. he should have republicans over. do you think that kind of thing is atmospherics or just results? >> no, i don't think it's atmospherics. if i have in the back of my head that i can trust what you tell me, we're much more likely to get to an agreement. steven rattner, the president's car czar, says republicans in congress today are just unwilling to cooperate. >> the president might have spent more time in the first term reaching out to the congressmen, playing golf with them, having them at the white house. certainly couldn't have hurt and could haven't made things worse, that's for sure. it might have helped. at the same time i think people who went and saw the movie "lincoln" and say well, if only we had lincoln in the white house, we could have passed any amendment we wanted. >> now, now, now! >> if only we had lbj in the

white house, we've have the civil rights act again, they're kidding themselves. this is a very partisan era. >> robert rubin was secretary of the treasury during another very partisan time. >> how did you deal with republicans on the hill during the '97 agreement while you were trying to impeach president clinton? >> the partisan divide was bad. i think it's worse today. i think we have to do exactly what president obama said right after the election. >> i want to be clear. i'm not wedded to every detail of my plan. i'm open to compromise. i'm open to new ideas. i'm committed to solving our fiscal challenge. but i refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced. >> in a democracy, you can only move forward if both sides, albeit having very different philosophical views, are willing to come together and govern. that's what we' been lacking. without i think we're in very big trouble. >> john podesta, bill clinton's chief of staff, says the president can make things happen

even without congressional support. >> the president has enormous power under the constitution in the laws of the united states. i'll give you an example. he has authority to change the mix of energy in the country through the use of existing powers that he has under the statutes, particularly the work that he could do through his epa to move through the more dirty forms of polluting fuels to cleaner fuels. >> it might be hard to make it happen, but james baker's point holds. president obama will need to get some help from republicans if he wants to get things done. otherwise it's just talk. if he could get 30 to 40 house republicans on his side, obama would have created a governing majority, something every successful president has had. next up, the economy. is there a silver bullet that will get it going? we'll tell you when we come back. [ slap! ]

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fixing the american economy is the most urgent crisis president obama faces. despite the recovery, unemployment remains high, growth isn't where we would like it to be, and the national debt has grown to historic proportions. the bill in the face of the fiscal crisis is a small fix. is there a larger one? once again, james baker. >> what would be your advice to president obama? >> well, my advice to president obama is, mr. president, whatever happens in the second term, you're going to bear the consequences of. our country is in sick shape financially. economically we're in bad shape. if we didn't have the dollar as the de facto currency of the world, we would be greece. we need to fix the economic problem. it's not going to be fixed without you. the republicans maintain control of the house.

we have a divided government. he's got to take the lead. he may score some short-term victories over the republicans. in the medium to long term, it's his enchilada. >> president clinton's secretary of the treasury, robert rubin. >> there are a number of people who say he's got to get the fiscal house in order, he's got to deal with the deficit. why is that important? >> i think it's imperatively important to design a sound fiscal program that both contributes to job creation and recovery in the short term, and i absolutely believe a sound fiscal program will do that by creating confidence and creating fiscal room for a moderate stimulus. it also meets the long-term imperative for addressing what i believe is an unsustainable and

dangerous fiscal trajectory. in order to put ourselves on a sound fiscal footing, we're going to have to have more revenue, whether it's higher taxes, and that's going to be cost absorbed by those paying the taxes and there will have to be restraints on political systems. that's what you have do if you're going to get on a sound fiscal path, and the longer you wait, the deeper your hole gets. the harder it is to regain confidence. >> there are others who say we need even more fundamental economic reform. for example, it's time to redo the country's convoluted tax system. with all of its rulings and regulations, the u.s. tax code is now 73,000 pages long. paul o'neill, treasury secretary under george w. bush, has an idea. >> you really want to scrap the entire u.s. tax code. >> i do. >> why? >> because it's inefficient, it's ineffective, and its fundamentally unfair. so i believe this --

revenue systems should be used to raise money. it shouldn't be organized to distribute benefits. >> so no tax deductions. >> no deductions, no credits, no nothing. it's to raise revenue. and ideally we should do it with a progressive value-added tax. that means -- >> that's a national sales tax, correct? >> well, it's not quite because progressive is important to me. i don't want people to pay taxes if they have $20,000 a year worth of income, but at $30,000, i'd like people to pay 1 dollar, just $1.00 so they have a legitimate claim for saying i'm part of the society and i don't pay a lot but i pay something. everybody participates. there's no game playing. it's a very efficient way to pay taxes. right now it costs over $31 million a year to administer it.

the tax gap that we theoretically owe is $41 billion a year. we can do better than that. we can think better than that. and the president needs to lay that out for us. >> even if we get more growth, we're still finding it difficult to get unemployment down. elaine chao served as george w. bush's secretary of labor. >> what would you do to create more jobs in america? >> i think you have to keep the tax rate low. they're a direct burden on the resources of an employer. the unemployment rate has dropped to 7.7% but that's primarily because the labor rate has dropped to 6.3%. one of the lowest we have seen in current years. so what we're seeing actually is a lot of discouraging workers, people who can't find jobs and

they've given up, they're no longer working and they're not included the work force. it's the private sector who does the bulk of the hiring and they've got to have the confidence and that confidence coming from a more reasonable taxation level, more reasonable regulatory reform, and then also the fiscal discipline that we need in our country to restore our country's overall financial ratings. >> democrats say what's most important is a stable predictable set of rules, whatever the levels of taxation. steven rattner helped general motors get back into the black as president obama's car czar. one of the things that people say president obama needs to do is create a sense of confidence among the business community, which will drive investment, which will drive jobs. so how does he do that? >> i think the president is off to a much better start but i think we need to have a set of policies in place which does involve congress long term. we need to have long-term tax policy, long-term budget policy, long-term regulatory policy. not doing this a few months at a time, not careening from a debt ceiling debacle to a fiscal cliff to some other issue with

tax credits that expire every few months and all that kind of stuff. so i think somehow the government as a whole has to come together in order to give business the confidence it needs. >> the single most important constant that we need to get under control is health care, which now takes up 17% of gdp and still rises much faster than inflation every year. peter orszag ran president obama's office of management and budget during the first term. he says obamacare moves us away from a bad model where doctors and hospitals have a financial incentive to sell you lots of services. getting health care costs down is absolutely fundamental to the long-term fiscal care of this country. so what would he need do in the second term? >> i think he needs to do several things. we need to move away much more rapidly. we don't need to wait until

2020. the big gap that remains is medical malpractice reform. i would provide safe harbor to a doctor. if you can show you're followed an evidence-based protocol put forward by a medication association, i shouldn't be able to sue you. >> tax and health care reform would have huge benefits, but getting them done will be hard. coming up next, is there an easy win for the president and the country? actually yes. immigration reform. stay with us. cted and you see the woman you fell in love with. she's everything to you. but your erectile dysfunction - that could be a question of blood flow. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medications, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess with cialis. side effects may include

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i'm fareed zakaria. welcome back to "memo to the president." on the domestic front, in addition to the economy, president obama faces many pressing issues that will demand attention in his second term. but one seems ripe for a solution. immigration reform. james baker, ronald reagan's chief of staff, explains why. >> nothing concentrates the mind like being out of power for four years. okay? so i think that republican attitudes are going to change -- hopefully they'll change in the aftermath of this most recent electoral defeat because everybody knows that the hispanic vote was more important to what happened. >> john podesta, bill clinton's, chief of staff, agrees.

a grand bargain on immigration is now possible. >> immigration, i think, we've seen just a sea change as a result of the election. and i think that really is because of just the collapse of the latino vote for republicans. you know, we saw it drop from 44% for president bush in 2004 to 27% for governor romney. and that's the fastest growing part of the voting population. and so i think the republicans know they have gotten themselves into a dark place, and they need to come out of that place, and they need to deal with the people who are here, who are contributing to our society. get them legal -- get them on a path to citizenship. >> first of all, we need to beef up our border security. republicans like that. you need some sort of a photo i.d., social security card with biometric identification. item number three would be a guest worker program. and the fourth item ought to be registering the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens who are here in the country today and giving them the right to travel

and to work temporarily provided, a, they're not criminals, b, they pay their back taxes, and, c, they pay a small penalty for having broken the law in the first place. >> but let me push you on that because if you don't provide a path to citizenship -- >> i don't think you have to say that they can become citizens. this -- that part of my four-point program's going to be attacked vociferously as amnesty by people over on the republican side. but it's not amnesty. >> but if they don't become citizens -- >> they have a path to citizenship. they do the way every other immigrant does to become an american citizen. >> what would you say to the republicans who will say, look, they should be deported? >> well, yeah. >> they should never have a path -- >> i understand that, and i think what you say to them is look what your position got us in this last election. we need to pay attention to demographics. okay? i said we need to be the party of hope and opportunity.

not the party of anger and resentment. >> illegal immigration is just one problem with our current system says michael bloomberg, the mayor of new york city and one of america's most successful businessmen. >> good morning. >> bloomberg believes that the current legal system is also hurting our international competitiveness. >> we let in lots of people from all over the world to study at american universities. >> yes. >> particularly in science and engineering. >> right. >> and then we throw them out. how would you fix the visa system? >> well, first thing is you attach a green card to the diploma for any graduate student that gets a master's or a ph.d. in any of the stem areas, science and technology. and then you have more h1b visas so companies can use those to get people here. then you have to -- if somebody is willing to start a business and can get financing, you certainly want to give them a visa because they will go and start businesses for americans.

and lastly, when you have jobs that we need to get done but americans won't take, like working in the fields, letting the crops rot, or letting the farms move south of the border is just insanity. we need to get people in here. >> i hereby declare -- >> i hear by declare -- >> that's a sensible solution that might actually happen. there's also a sensible plan that alas seems a long shot. both parties see the problem. our nation's roads and power lines, bridges and water pipes, are literally falling apart. the problem is, nobody wants to do anything about it. >> good afternoon, everyone. >> ed rendell, the former governor of pennsylvania, has a new book out called "a nation of wusses." he says the solution is simple. >> as governor, i inherited a state that has the highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the nation. we had 6,600 structurally

deficient bridges. well, i borrowed a lot of money, put it into bridge repair, stimulus helped us mightily. that is one of the reasons pennsylvania had the lowest employment of any industrial state in the union. there was in stimulus something called build america bonds. the federal government said to the states, if you want to do major development and construction projects, we will help you defray 35% of the interest payments. but it ran out when stimulus ran out, and an effort to reauthorize it as a separate program was turned down. now, the beauty of it is very little impact on federal treasury, incredible impact on the amount of projects we can get going. this isn't rocket science. it's not like finding a cure for alzheimer's or parkinson's or cancer. we know what the answers are. we know the cure to the problem and all it takes is political courage. >> kay bailey hutchison is the recently retired senior senator from texas. >> i would ask the president to

submit an infrastructure bank, and it would leverage your public money with private money, so about a 50/50 split, and it would have a revenue stream so that you would be assured, the government would be paid back and bring that money that is sitting on the sidelines into making a real effort to build highways, it would be bridges, it would be electricity grids. all kinds of infrastructure needs that are not being met now that could be done with lower amounts of taxpayer dollars and that would end up being a revolving fund. >> in fact, the president has submitted just such a plan. but congress doesn't want a bank that would fund projects based on merit. much as they protest publicly, congressmen and women actually like pork. next up, foreign policy. should we bomb iran? intervene in syria? quarrel with china? stay tuned. [ alarm clock ringing ] [ female announcer ] if you have rheumatoid arthritis,

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the middle east is in turmoil. israelis and palestinians bear fresh wounds from the recent conflict in gaza. iran continues to play games with the world regarding its nuclear ambitions. and the arab spring continues to

reverberate in some good ways, for sure, but also in some troubling ways. and the civil war in syria becomes a bigger humanitarian crisis by the day. that's a lot of problems in just one region. here to give us his take is jimmy carter's national security adviser. what should president obama do with syria as it continues its slow-motion drift into chaos? >> i don't know. and i'm not being evasive. i literally don't know. we have to have better intelligence. who's really fighting assad? who started the fight? how is it financed? where did the initial weaponry for the beginning of that struggle a year ago or so originate? there doesn't seem to be any clarity on it. secondly, what are the objectives of those who are really doing the fighting? for example, the suicide bombing

in damascus, is that the work of the so-called more democratic groups that we would like to see in charge? doesn't that smack of certain forms of extremist terror that's associated with extreme groups? >> would you intervene militarily? >> well, i would intervene militarily if i knew that something has to be desperately prevented or if i knew that the effort would not produce a regional war and would produce a desirable political outcome, and at this stage, i don't see much evidence for a "yes" as the answer to either prop petition. >> james baker served as secretary of state for george bush, sr. the president is going to face in his second term unexpected challenges, but there's one challenge we know he's going to face, which is what to do about iran. how would you advise him to deal with it in the second term? >> in my view, we cannot let iran become a nuclear power. not because of the threat to israel or the threat to the united states or the threat to

our moderate arab allies in the gulf but because of the proliferation effect of that. everybody in the region then will want their own weapon, and they'll have the means to get it. >> you know what a decision like that would do to the presidency, however, if there were a major military action, and iran is a big country, many times larger than iraq. it could derail almost all the other initiatives. >> it could. when i say do what you have to do, it doesn't mean you put boots on the ground in iran, which i think would be a very, very bad mistake. i'm talking about the potential for eliminating their nuclear program through surgical strikes and that sort of thing. we do have technologies now that the israelis don't have that could be effective to do that, i think. >> zbigniew brzezinski sees the dangers regarding iran quite differently. >> get off the silly argument,

all the options are on the table. what does that mean? we're going to commit suicide by starting a war, the end of which we cannot foresee? that doesn't make any sense to me, and i don't think the country would support it. and i don't buy the absolute ridiculous irrational argument that the iranians are so suicidal that a country of 75 million people or 80 million people is going to rush into committing suicide the moment it gets the first prototype of its bomb. that even ignores the scientific fact that bombs have to be tested, that you have to have from a military point of view quite a number of them to be credible, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. so we're not dealing with an imminent threat or reaction to be decided by someone else drawing red lines for us. >> a red line should be drawn right here. >> what do you think going forward the president's strategy on iran should be? >> i think a war in the region will be a total disaster for the region, which would be set aflame.

it would make our withdrawal from afghanistan much more difficult. the war would spread to iraq, to lebanon, and to jordan very predictably. the price of oil would skyrocket. these are calamities for us, and we would be stuck for another decade. i think that has to be avoided even if negotiations don't succeed. we have in my view a credible, historically tried, safe way of responding. namely, to make it absolutely clear that any threat by them derived from their acquisition of nuclear capability will be viewed by the united states as an assault on the united states, if it is directed at our friends in the middle east, and in particular israel. i think that would contain and deter the iranians. >> how would you handle israel with regard to the iran issue? >> well, i would tell israel the same thing the obama

administration has already told israel. it's not in the national interest of the united states for you to bomb iran's nuclear facilities. we don't want you to do that. that's not in our national interest and you let us take care of them. we have the potential to stop it. you have the potential only to delay it. and the consequences of your doing it are right now incomprehensible, but they could be very, very dire. >> do you believe that it's important that in president obama's second term he try to make a renewed effort on the middle east peace process, even though, let's face it, so far what he's done has been unsuccessful? >> i'll tell you why i think so. i think if we don't move and do what is necessary, the arab masses will become more radicalized, more religiously driven, and, therefore, eventually more jihadist, vis-a-vis, israel. and i don't think israel can survive in the long run in that context.

>> handling iran will be a delicate balance between toughness and restraint. and unlike other foreign policy crises, the clock is ticking. we know that president obama will have to deal with this one and probably this year. from the most urgent foreign policy issue to the most important, the relationship between the united states and china. how to prevent a new cold war, when we come back. see life in the best light.

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. >> i'm rafael romo. cnn headquarters in atlanta. here's a quick look at the headlines. algeria's three-day hostage crisis are over. some americans were among the nearly 800 gas workers who were taken captive by what was believed to be islamic extremists. the algerian military launched a major push to succeed them on saturday. they succeeded but dozens of people, both hostages captors were killed. a politician narrowly escaped an attack at a party conference. watch this. the 25-year-old gunman was wrestled to the ground. police arrested him and said he was carrying two knives along with the gun. it's believed the gun misfired twice. the second inauguration of the nation's 44th president is just hours away. just before noon on sunday, the president will take the oath of office inside the white house

before live cameras. he'll take the oath again monday outside the capitol where 800,000 people are expected to gather on the national mall. those are the headlines this hour. i'm rafael romo. the most important relationship in the world right now is the one between the united states and china, the world's number one and number two economies. successful management of this relationship will be one of president obama's most important tasks over the next four years. it's a mission fraught with potential pitfalls as the two powers compete economically and increasingly politically and militarily as well. a little over a year ago, president obama signaled a pivot to asia. >> the united states is a pacific power, and we are here

to stay. >> a shift in america's attention toward the east, how is it working? zbigniew brzezinski helped to normalize relations with china as jimmy carter's national security adviser. you say the main challenge that the united states faces at a broad level is the shift of power to asia, both a challenge and an opportunity. >> that's correct. i think our policy, historically has been europe-focused. today the center of political gravity shifted from europe to asia in the sense that both are now important. we ought to think of our role in asia not in the fashion because of two world wars, we are compelled to think of it in europe, but more in the fashion that is similar to british role in europe in the 19th century. britain was not protagonist but

a balancer in europe and i think that's the model for us in asia. we should avoid getting involved in mainland contests. for example, the vietnamese when they offered us the use of cam rahn bay, they were not acting out of charity. they were trying to get us to be in cam ranh bay so our navy would be a form of support for them against the chinese. >> so the danger is -- >> involvement which is not of the size of importance. i think what is important to us is that we be a balancer so that we discourage dramatic shifts or particularly the use of force. >> james baker served as secretary of state under george bush sr. there are a lot of countries in asia that are looking at china's rise with apprehension, and they have asked the united states to get more involved. singapore, philippines, vietnam, japan more importantly, to a certain extent australia. how should we think about this pivot?

>> i think we're wise, for instance, to stay out of the disputes in the south china see, see if we can get the parties to resolve those disputes peacefully. now, if those disputes end up creating an impediment to free navigation, freedom of the seas or something, that's a different issue. that then would affect our interest directly. if we ever wanted to build an alliance against chinese attempts to become hegomonistic to that part of the world, we could do so. we could ally with vietnam probably today, interestingly enough. our long-time opponent would be an ally of ours against china, but i'm not sure that that's the way to go. we will have to closely monitor china's military build-up. we plan to do that as i understand it. that's important to do. we must keep a robust military presence in the pacific. we do that with the seventh fleet.

they have every bit as big an interest in getting along with us as we do with getting along with them. where our interests don't converge, we have differences we stand up for our views and we stand up for our rights. >> when you look at u.s. relations with china, do you think we should be doing anything different going forward? >> i think we should certainly reassert publicly the importance of the relationship. we should avoid the kind of language that was used in our presidential campaign and particularly by the party that lost. >> on day one i will label china a currency manipulator, which will allow me as president to be able to put in place if necessary tariffs where i believe that they're taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers. >> it sent a message to the

chinese to which they then started reciprocating in kind with alarm and with anger, and i think that's the kind of stuff we have to avoid. >> robert rubin, bill clinton's treasury secretary, says china is used as a whipping post during presidential campaigns. >> one thing i think i could say with absolute assurance -- and i think nothing is absolutely assured in life -- if governor romney was electriced president, he would not have labelled china as a currency manipulator his first day or any day. china is our most important relationship in my judgment, at least. i think it's in our economic self-interest as well as in their economic self-interest to have an effective relationship. i think a lot of what they complain about with respect to us, for example, our large fiscal deficits, one example, i think it would be in our interest to deal with. similarly, a lot of what we complain about with respect to them, their export-driven strategy, the absence of domestic demand, i think it's critically important to have sustainable growth going forward to deal with that issue. so think we have a common self-interest in dealing with many of the issues that we complain to each other about. >> what should be the core elements of a u.s./china

relationship going forward? >> the core elements of a cooperative u.s./chinese relationship is in many respects in the communique that was issued in january 2011 by presidents obama and hu jintao of china. it went to great lengths in itemizing and developing several areas in which we are to be cooperating, because it sets a frame work. a frame work in which partnership is really given meaning, and a frame work for something unpriested in the history of human affairs. namely, when two major powers arise, they almost never collide. for the first time in history, america and china have the opportunity to avoid that, to be partners, and thereby do themselves well because in the present circumstances worldwide if china and america collide, both will suffer. >> so the lesson is to be

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we've heard from senior statesmen and women on what president obama needs to do to have a successful second term and a successful legacy. here are some of my own thoughts. most presidents get just a couple of lines in history. >> we face our common difficulties. >> fdr revived the country after the great depression and won world war ii. >> its purpose is not to punish. >> lyndon johnson created the great society and escalated the war in vietnam. the first line of president obama's legacy has already been written. >> we are done. >> he helped usher in universal health care in america. >> take a deep breath in and out for me. >> that is a historic achievement.

but it remains to be seen whether it is the beginning of a path toward a more humane and sustainable health care system or one more step down a path of fiscal ruin. having expanded access to health care in his first term, obama must now concentrate on bringing costs down using some of the mechanisms within obama care but expanding them and creating others. getting health care reform right will be more important to our fiscal future than any other set of policies. beyond this, obama has opportunities to make large moves. he could and should tackle immigration because it does seem ripe for resolution. he might even be able to find common ground on reforming the tax code, something most americans agree needs to be reformed. but none of these efforts will

rise to the level of that second line for obama's legacy. >> good afternoon, everybody. >> good afternoon, everybody. >> that will depend on the future of american growth. the president inherited an economy in free fall. he helped prevent a second great depression. but he also inherited an economy that was fundamentally unbalanced. for over 20 years, economic growth in america has been slow, recoveries have been jobless, and median wages have declined. we need a new strategy for growth based on reform and investment. we need major reforms of regulations and tax policies to make america competitive and growth-oriented, but we also desperately need new investments for the future. we need a world-class infrastructure, not one that is now ranked 25th in the world according to the world economic forum. we need highly trained workers.